Accounts Receivables Management

There are number of good reasons why you should outsource the administration, management and/or collection of your current or overdue debtors’ ledger to Pro-Collect. Typically our clients say their decisions were based on:

Concentrating all their time on new sales and marketing and not getting the time to control their debtors’ ledger or to follow-up on overdue payments.

Finding it was more economical and reliable to engage the professional services of Pro-Collect than to maintain an accounts receivable department of their own.

Working in the business doing administration, instead of working on the business to produce new sales and income.

Gaining better results from Pro-Collect on the average number of days outstanding and without damaging existing client relationships, than they were with managing the process internally.

Unable to find suitable or reliable accounts receivable staff, or else their business did not justify the employment of full time experienced accounts receivables staff.

In conjunction with you we tailor an agreed process that sees your clients contacted at regular predetermined dates throughout your payment cycle, combined with tight control where a level of action appropriate to each stage of the payment cycle is initiated and pursued by your experienced Pro-Collect Account Manager, to ensure the timely payment of your invoices and the early identification of any potential problem clients, without damaging valuable existing client relationships.

As part of the agreed process, your current accounts receivables accounts ledger is regularly downloaded (at a regularity set by you) to Pro-Collect via Excel spreadsheet, CSV file or similar. A similar Spreadsheet can also be used to provide Pro-Collect with regular updates of payments made direct to you, to avoid unnecessary further contact with clients who have paid in that cycle.

Example of a Typical Process

At the beginning of each Invoice cycle (whether weekly, monthly or as otherwise determined by you) you download your Current Accounts Receivables ledger (including all contact details for your client) to Pro-Collect (via Excel spreadsheet, CSV file or similar) for action in accordance with the following process, any component of which can be eliminated, amended, brought forward or postponed:

Suggested process

At 25 days Pro-Collect will contact your client by telephone (preferably directed to the name of a contact identified by you). The purpose of this call will be presented in such a manner that the client takes this to be a follow-up “client service” call from your organisation, to confirm your invoice has been received, that the services rendered are satisfactory and there are no questions or queries. Your Pro-Collect Account Manager gently massages the proposed anticipated payment of your invoice.

In those cases where your client identifies a missing invoice or other problem, we report the details to you for appropriate action to be taken in enhancing your relationship with that client.

At 40 days and where no advice has been received from you that payment has been made, Pro-Collect will again contact your client by telephone to firmly, but not aggressively, canvass that payment is now outside of your trading terms of say 30 days and to accordingly but politely seek an early commitment date as to when that payment will be made (i.e. preferably within 7 days of that date and at not more than 60 days overdue).

At the earlier of say 63 days (i.e. two to three business days into the new month to allow payments to reach you, that were made at the 60 day prior month end period) or 7 days after expiry of the arrangement for payment date as agreed to by your client in above contact, Pro-Collect again contacts your client by telephone to firmly apply pressure for immediate payment to you.
This should result in a further short term arrangement. If your client is unwilling to commit to a further short term arrangement to pay your outstanding invoice (and the possibility that a further invoice will have also been issued and now be due for payment), we will report this situation to you and seek your instructions for further action.

At 3 days after the expiry of the arrangement referred to in above contact (i.e. around 75 days) and where no payment has been received by you, Pro-Collect will again contact your client by telephone to firmly and assertively require that your client commits to a further short term payment arrangement.
If the client is unwilling to commit to a further short term arrangement to pay your outstanding invoice (and the possibility that a further invoice will have also been issued and now be due for payment), we will report this situation to you and seek your instructions for further action.

Should 3 days expire after the further arrangement as referred to above (i.e. around 85 days) and where no payment has been received by you, it will be apparent that since this is the third broken arrangement, that for whatever reason, your client does not intend to voluntarily prioritise payment to you.
At this point we will recommend to you that pro-active and assertive action is required by way of Pro-Collect transferring this debt from being a Current Receivables Account to a Debt Collection account, to be actioned in accordance with our Debt Collection Services.
Such Debt Collection action commences with a strong letter of demand for payment. This demand places your debtor on notice that should payment not be received within strictly a further 7 days, legal action will be commenced for recovery without further notice.

The above typical process can be varied by the number of telephone attendances, a reduction or extension of time between each of the various steps or the added introduction of overdue letters.

Any letters are totally drafted to your requirements, ideally taking into account any prior action taken, the need to retain the client, but also balanced against the fact that a client is not a client if they do not pay within a reasonable period of time.

All the telephone attendances are designed to relay to your client that the call is from your office or else acting on your behalf, naturally and rather than the call being introduced as Pro-Collect.

Any letters that are used in the process can also be sent on your letterhead.

Costs of our accounts receivables management service

We offer the following two options for the management and collection of your Receivables Accounts:

Commission on payments received: A commission applies to each payment received after the phone call at 25 days (as set out in the above Typical Process section).Our commissions commence as low as 0.5% per payment, depending on a number of variables established in our initial discussions with you, such as the regularity and anticipated size of your ledger, average debt size and number of steps in the agreed process.

Fee for service rendered: For the steps described in the above Typical Process section, we charge a static fee of $15.00 (plus GST) per contact phone call (i.e. where we are able to speak with the person or a substitute person within your client ‘s organisation, who identifies they are responsible for allocating payment or arranging for payment of your account [“the responsible person”] ) or $10.00 (plus GST) per a non-contact phone call (i.e. where we are unable to gain a response during business from your client’s organisation or we are only able to leave a message for the responsible person).

Additional terms may apply once we have had the opportunity to present a more detailed proposal to you.

Reporting To You

So that you are always able to have the best and immediately available information on the action taken, arrangements made or the recovery of your accounts we provide the following:

Your own specific client login code and password to enable you to securely access the real time progress of your accounts on-line via our web site.

A dedicated Paralegal Account Manager who will personally action your accounts and be available to answer each and every query you may have, including any delinquent debts that may have advanced to legal action.

Collection Reports and Statistical Reports, that are accessible by you via our website or upon request.

Monthly Tax Invoices and Statements that detail each and every collection transaction, including any reference number and/or debtor’s name as supplied by you, the amount and date of each collection (whether paid to you or to us) and the applicable commission.